


raw sienna, lemon, honey

by Thealmostrhetoricalquestion



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Actress!Daphne, Artist!Pansy, F/F, Femslash, One Shot, Rare Pairings, Romance, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-22
Updated: 2018-01-22
Packaged: 2019-03-08 08:25:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13454301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thealmostrhetoricalquestion/pseuds/Thealmostrhetoricalquestion
Summary: She studies the painting and sighs.It's Daphne again. Storms of gold spilling out over a white canvas. Daphne is a loose cannon, a hurricane in motion, movement and intensity and blaring impossibility. Pansy wants to kiss her eyelids and dab silver on her cheekbones, watch the light glance off them like sunlight off an arrowhead.Instead she paints Daphne into her art and prays that the girl - woman, now - never recognises something of herself in the colours. Pansy never explicitly paints her body or her face, not in a recognisable way, but there’s more to a person than their body, and that's what Pansy paints. That’s what art is, to her. The bits that you don’t see.





	raw sienna, lemon, honey

**Author's Note:**

> Just trying out a different style, and a different pairing. Hope you enjoy!

“Make me feel something,” Daphne demands, her voice as soft as her hands, fingertips and words skating over tanned skin, pressing lightly against all of Pansy’s edges and corners. Pansy wasn’t expecting the touch. She was waiting for the words, but not the silky feel of skin. 

She puts the paintbrush down slowly. She is cadmium orange hands and ultramarine skirt and her cheekbone is smeared with violet, but despite all of the messy colour, it’s the gold in Daphne’ eyes that catches her gaze, sparks of molten sunshine tempered with something dark, like chocolate, all heat and greed, like Daphne actually wants her. Properly wants her, too, all of Pansy, everything she can get her hands on, up against the wet wall. Pansy wants to pretend that the heat is for her, that Daphne won’t take it away in a few moments, once Pansy’s spat out the words she needs to.

Instead, she wets her lips and swallows past her dry throat. “You’re a very good actor.”

Daphne draws back slowly, blinking away the haze of conjured lust, her gaze flickering from easy and calm to indecipherable. “Yeah,” she agrees, without even a hint of arrogance. “Yeah, I am.”

“I don’t think you even need the practice,” Pansy says, even though the words hurt her throat on the way out, digging into her tongue. She doesn’t want this little game of theirs to stop, the one where Daphne practises her lines on Pansy and Pansy eats it up with a spoon; equally as pathetic, she knows it has to stop, all of it. Daphne has a girl on her arm every night, and she’s there after every show, for every rehearsal. 

They aren’t soulmates, is what Pansy is trying to say. 

“I don’t know,” Daphne says thoughtfully. “I’ve been doing this for years, but it all still feels fake sometimes, you know? The other night I got up to perform and just stood there like an ignoramus.” 

Ignoramus. Pansy’s mouth curves, curves like the dip of Daphne’s hip. 

“Performance issues are normal for some women,” Pansy says slyly. “Nothing to be ashamed of.” 

Daphne’s eyes have that glint about them. “Speaking from experience? Anyway, you know what I mean.” 

“Not really.” 

Pansy doesn’t say that it is fake. She doesn’t say that Daphne is reading from a script, even if the paper isn’t in her hand, because it is fake, all of it – there’s a stage and numerous sets and props and costumes and make-up, and when Daphne walks onto the stage, she isn’t Daphne. She’s an actress, and actresses become their characters. She’s someone else, a different person – a fake person, but Pansy will never say that. That’s not what Daphne needs to hear. 

Besides, she gets it. Daphne is an actress who takes her job seriously, takes pride in her work and loves every minute of it, no matter how exhausting or frustrating it gets, and that’s something that Pansy’s always admired in her. Daphne makes her audience feel like she doesn’t exist, like the character up there in front of the big red curtain is actually who they say they are. She wants it to feel real. 

“You’re just going through a bit of a slump,” Pansy assures her. She flicks her gaze to the large wall in front of her, assessing the damage and trying to work out, roughly, how much room she has for her next mural, since she needs at least part of the wall for some framed work. When she turns back, humming thoughtfully, Daphne is staring at her with this glittering look in her eyes. 

“What?” 

Daphne shrugs one shoulder, delicate, the stem of a rose, the wilt of a wineglass. “Is it a crime to like watching you work?” 

Before Pansy can react, Daphne is talking over her, her hands fiddling with a paintbrush while she asks questions, ever curious, about Pansy’s next project. She sweeps her hands over the space in front of the wall and turns to look at Pansy; the light from the long windows catches her just right, bathing her in bronze and yellow ochre, the sun’s personal canvas. Pansy wants to frame her. 

“Pansy?” 

“Just thinking,” Pansy says softly. She’s always been too sharp, too jagged, like shattered glass. Daphne brings out the softness in her. 

“You going to do what you did last time, do up the whole house?” Daphne combs her fingers through her own hair, working out exhausted tangles, smiling at the half-finished painting. “Your little parties have their own reputation, you know. I passed out the flyers, by the way, for your next exhibition. Lots of my theatre people are pretty interested.” 

“That’s because of the free champagne,” Pansy says. “Thanks, though. I need as many viewers as I can get.” 

It’s not true – Pansy is pretty much set for life. She’s got enough inheritance money to live comfortably, and then on top of that, there are the sales she makes worldwide on her art. 

Her ‘little parties’ are exhibits, a chance to show what she’s proud of. She buys apartments or lofts, studios, and she decorates them in so much art that eventually the building itself becomes art, and then she hosts a bunch of people who like looking at what she makes. 

“Liar,” Daphne says fondly. “So, the last line, how was it? I feel like it fell flat, somehow. And I know, I know, I’m in a slump, or whatever you want to call it, but that’s no excuse for shoddy acting. Just, tell me what to do better?” 

Daphne wants to be real, so she goes to Pansy, and they practice her lines even though Pansy is a different kind of artist, and Pansy falls even more hopelessly in love with her with every passing day. 

Pansy picks up the paintbrush, puts it back down again. The wall needs a few finishing touches and there's paint that needs to be cleaned off the kitchen floor and owls to reply to, but instead of doing the sensible thing, Pansy looks up at Daphne and says, "I guess we better practice until you get it right then. Can't have you disappointing your audience." 

Daphne’s lips twist - vermillion, the softest, pinkest hue - and then she's moving forward into Pansy's space again, her shirt rolled up to her elbows and her hair tousled, all intense purposefulness tangled up in those slender, seeking fingers. 

"Make me feel something," Daphne demands, her voice a plea and an order all at once. There's this bleak desperation in the pale lines of her face and her eyes are so wide and bright and wanting - a touch of raw sienna and lemon and honey. 

Hands go to Pansy's face, grazing her jawline, and Pansy tries to remember her own line, but it's like inhaling smoke whilst being told to forget about the fire – a pointless, impossible exercise. 

"Feelings are overrated," Daphne reminds her, in a whisper of a tone, and Pansy nods and repeats the words in a gravelly voice. 

For a splinter of a second, Daphne’s fond smile is real, for Pansy. 

*

Pansy lives alone. She has a bed – a mattress, dandelion white, no frame – that sits in the middle of her loft apartment and an old wooden ladder that leans against a white wall. She balances her paint pots on each step and sits cross-legged on the floor, leaning against the bed, hitching noodles out of a takeout container while the setting sun throws her latest work into dappled darkness. 

She studies the painting and sighs. 

It's Daphne again. Storms of gold spilling out over a white canvas. Daphne is a loose cannon, a hurricane in motion, movement and intensity and blaring impossibility. Pansy wants to kiss her eyelids and dab silver on her cheekbones, watch the light glance off them like sunlight off an arrowhead. 

Instead she paints Daphne into her art and prays that the girl - woman, now - never recognises something of herself in the colours. Pansy never explicitly paints her body or her face, not in a recognisable way, but there’s more to a person than their body, and that is what Pansy paints. That’s what art is, to her. The bits that you don’t see. 

Pansy lives alone, but her home is full of ghosts, occupied by slim outlines and partially obscured faces and half-formed figures. Daphne wanders in minutes later, her own takeout container clutched in his hands, chopsticks soaring through the air as she mutters under her breath. 

"Spare me a dream and I'll take the reality," Daphne says lowly. "Spare me … spare me? Fuck. Where the fuck does the emphasis go? Spare me a dream, and I’ll take the reality. As long as it has you in it, as long as I can feel your skin against my skin."

Chopsticks wave in her direction, and Pansy dutifully reels off her part of the dialogue, her voice so much stiffer and solid than Daphne's. When Daphne swears, it's like music to her ears. When she speaks it's soft and sweet and harsh all at once, and when she recites, it's breath-taking. 

"You should do something with that bathtub in the other room," Daphne says, breaking character for a second to slump down beside Pansy, bumping their shoulders together, her breath warm on Pansy's cheek. 

"I showered this morning." 

"No," Daphne says, rolling her eyes. "Do something with it. Photograph it or paint it, do something. It can be your next project. You said you'd run out of ideas." 

"My muse is taking a break," Pansy corrects her, but her mind is already whirring to life, rusty cogs and gears creaking to life reluctantly. 

"Do you ever think that dreams are just the things we can't have, dangled just out of reach?" Daphne asks, slipping easily into another skin between one breath and the next. "Aren't humans cruel? Aren't we cruel to ourselves? I see you on the back of my eyelids every night, and every day it gets harder to look at you without hurting." 

Pansy snorts, arches an eyebrow. 

"Pretentious, isn't it?" Daphne says, grinning. "People lap this stuff up, though. Unrequited love and lust and pining really sells." 

"You could be a star, you know," Pansy says mildly. And then, "I need your hands." 

Daphne opens her mouth like she's about to reply, licks her lips and stares instead. 

"For the bathtub," Pansy adds, after the silence stretches on for a second too long. "I want to take pictures, but I want to use hands, and it'll take too much fiddling to set up any tripods. Plus, I'd rather have my camera in my own hands if it's going anywhere near water." 

She doesn’t say that Daphne’s hands are prettier than any prop. 

Daphne blinks at her slowly, nods. The chopsticks go down, and Pansy goes up, humming as she sifts through her bag in search of her camera. It's a big blocky thing with a thousand lenses and a few shiny pink stickers on the side, courtesy of Draco’s daughter. 

“Are you sure you want my hands?” Daphne asks, walking into the bare bathroom, wiggling her fingers as Pansy fiddles about with the faucets. Those pale, hauntingly beautiful hands are always at the back of Pansy’s mind, always ghosting along the edge of her dreams. 

“I always want your hands,” Pansy mutters, her voice drowned out by the sudden burst of hot water from the tap. When she glances up, camera at the ready, Daphne is staring at her curiously, and for a moment Pansy thinks she’s given himself away, but then Daphne shrugs a little and asks, “Where do you want me?”

*

Pansy watches from the wings as Daphne twirls Millicent around the stage, both of them laughing giddily. Millie is sharp, and when Pansy paints her she takes to the paper reluctantly, morphing into angular constructs that bleed red. She doesn't paint her often. She doesn't need that reminder. 

There are people filling the room and students muttering under their breath as they rush past carrying cosmetics and sewing kits and broken props, papier-mâché heads and bells and drums. Pansy is one person in a sea of colour and creativity, but Daphne finds her anyway, her eyes cutting through the crowd and fixing on Pansy, who stutters in a breath. Raw sienna, even at a distance. 

Loving someone so loud and beautiful and larger than life is hard. It makes her heart press wildly against her ribcage, begging for that kind of joyous release that she usually only finds in painting, in pushing her words out onto paper in pictures. 

Daphne is electric. She's strong, thin arms and translucent skin, she's a powerful, hoarse voice over the trill of sweet keys and she's a glinting shard of sunlight, hot and fierce and intense. Daphne is also goofy and sweet in ways that always catch Pansy off guard, mixed in with a healthy amount of crudeness and a fierce love of junk food. She’s deliciously human, and it eats Pansy up inside. 

*

It’s like this; once, when Pansy was young and the world was only as big as her home town, as wild as her own back yard, she met a girl, and that girl smiled, and the world grew three sizes in half as many moments. Daphne has always been there, for as long as Pansy can remember, and Pansy has always wanted her. Even when she was younger and didn’t really know what it meant to want someone, she wanted Daphne. She wanted to hold her hand and braid her hair and kiss her cheek. She wanted, and the want stayed with her. 

And the thing is, no-one ever said Daphne didn't want her back. 

*

Cherry red lipstick. That’s what Pansy wears the night Daphne kisses her. Cherry red lipstick and a little black number, velvet to the touch and so soft that it sets her skin on fire. People mill around the loft, taking in the paint worked into the surface of the messy mattress, absorbing the wildness of the wonders on the walls. It’s a little party, an exhibit, and Pansy’s never been more bored than when people pretend to understand what she paints. Sometimes she doesn’t understand it, so why would a stranger? 

There’s champagne on her tongue and a glass in her hands, the stem fine and fragile between her fingers. Bubbles pop and fizz, and there’s that sweet tang, that silvery sting on the roof of her mouth. She feels so light, light enough to fly, and she hates it. She wants to feel grounded. She wants her feet anchored to the ground, not this bubbly naivety that reminds her of youthful days, days before the war and before the dread and fear. 

Daphne finds her on the balcony. The wineglass sits on the ground, half-empty, lipstick kissing the rim. Daphne curls a hand around her shaking arm, just above her elbow, and blows in her ear. 

It’s startling. 

Pansy jerks, turns to find Daphne laughing silently. 

“You were miles away,” Daphne explains. “I was just bringing you back to earth.”

“Maybe I liked where I was,” Pansy says. 

“You didn’t.” Mild, unassuming, correct. “You should be inside, mingling. Re-filling the glasses, schmoozing the masses, convincing Potter not to fuck Draco on the fire escape.”

“None of those things sound particular appealing.”

Daphne laughs. It sounds like summer and winter wrapped up into one, like all the seasons combined. The softness of autumn, the blurry heat of summer, the sharpness of winter, the wakefulness of spring. Daphne laughs, and then she turns and watches Pansy, skates her eyes over every inch of Pansy’s face. 

“I like this colour,” Daphne says, pressing her thumb to Pansy’s bottom lip. Pansy doesn’t breathe. She shakes instead, her whole world narrowed to that single fingerprint. “Mind if I try it on?”

Pansy doesn’t breathe, can’t breathe, so Daphne breathes for her. 

She pulls back, her mouth a smear of scarlet, and Pansy pulls her back in.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you! Please leave a comment/kudos and let me know what you think, I;d love to hear from you. And come say hey @thealmostrhetoricalquestion on tumblr. Thanks!


End file.
